


Like Home

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-10
Updated: 2019-06-10
Packaged: 2020-04-23 22:03:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19159870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Fluff and romance, MSR style. This also responds to @xfficchallenges prompt 7: Scully laughing or giggling in unabashed happiness with Mulder.





	Like Home

It’s 11.37am and it’s a bright late winter Saturday. Dust motes play in the light slanting across the room and casting a silver circle on her living room floorboards like a spotlight. She stands in it, duster still in hand and marvels at the mint-green of her string of pearls plant cascading over the dresser. It’s still alive, she thinks. This is a good day. She hums along to ‘Secret Love’ as Doris Day twirls a daffodil in her hands and thinks about the bubble bath she’s going to have later, patchouli-scented and cleansing. Thinks about spring. Thinks about Mulder. About the state of their relationship. About them.

And then he knocks. She knows it’s him. His knock is like his personality – arrogance fading into doubt. A series of swift, hard raps, then an echo, a fainter brushing of knuckles on timber. She pulls open the door and he’s smiling at her through his floppy bangs and holding out a carton.

“I brought pie,” he says and waits to be invited in. This is odd, she thinks, letting him pass with a flourish of her duster towards the kitchen. He sneezes. She stuffs the duster back under the sink and offers him coffee.

“Do you have any tea?”

This is odd, she thinks again. Since when did Mulder drink tea. He leans his hip against her counter and opens the carton. It’s not pumpkin or sweet potato. It’s Spanakopita.

“I do,” she says, “Earl Grey, peppermint, chamomile, although maybe English Breakfast is best for that pastry…Mulder, that’s a good-looking pie.” His grin is as sunny and promising as a warm spring day and she lets out a chuff of a laugh. “What brings you here, anyway? Don’t you have any mysterious footprints in the forest to investigate, or sightings of oversized felines or reports of haunting, mournful singing from those whose loves have left them heartbroken…”

“I heard you,” he says, taking the dinner plates to the table. “I thought your singing was quite admirable…are you, uh, are you heartbroken, Scully?”

“What?” She nearly drops the pie and the hot scent of feta and spinach and pastry waft under her nostrils.

He doesn’t reply, just takes the pie and puts it next to the salt and pepper shakers. The tea brews and he cuts the pie into triangles and she throws together a salad and it’s odd. It’s odd that they’re eating in companionable silence and neither of them is willing to ask why and neither of them is willing to care that much.

After, when she’s rinsing the dishes and he’s milling about trying to find the right places to put them back, she asks why he’s here.

“Do I need a reason, Scully?”

“Do you need a reason to turn up unannounced on a weekend, with a fresh Greek pastry, drink tea and not ask me to turn off a 1950s movie?” She watches the way his eyebrows slowly slip over his eyes and his mouth droops. Her stomach tingles and she feels she’s overstepped the mark with her gentle teasing. This is most certainly odd.

“I like your place,” he says, as if that solves the mystery they’re skirting around.

She looks around, at the plants and the stripy sofa and the books piled on the lamp table, at the bedroom door, open enough to see her lacy white coverlet and the plump pillows. She likes it too.

“Thank you,” she says, aiming for a more receptive tone.

His fingers tap the table top. “It’s tidy. The layout is…uh, correct…”

“Correct?”

He blushes slightly, rubs the back of his neck. “It’s just right. The rooms, they’re well-designed. You’ve…you’ve used the spaces well. It’s contained, but it expresses a kind of intelligent calm, it’s well-ordered, but there are bits of it that have depths, have beauty. The paintings, the decorative bits. It’s clever. It’s smart. Really smart. You…It’s really pretty here and I feel comfortable. I guess it feels like home.”

“Mulder?” There’s no easy way to say it. “Are you…are you feeling okay? Is something wrong?”

He lets out a vague laugh, shakes his head, looks away from her, walks into the middle of her living room. “Nothing’s wrong, Scully. I just like it here.”

So, here’s Mulder, in the silver spotlight, hands on hips, lips glistening, brain whirring. And it just…clicks. She feels so light and airy that she might just flutter into the air, a fledgling learning to fly. He’s just described her in terms of her apartment and she feels it’s as close as a declaration of…what, of like, of love, as she’s going to get and it’s so them. She’s a series of rooms. He’s an awkward representation of what he thinks her potential suitors might be. He brought her pie, not flowers. He didn’t take her out. He washed her dishes and drank her tea and filled her senses with his very being. And she hasn’t even noticed how very full she is, of him, until this moment. And it’s so wrong, that it’s right.

She can’t help it. She feels a bubble welling in her chest, that bursts out of her mouth in a peel of laughter, cascading from her like her string of pearls plant. It’s not even that funny, but it is. He is shocked, at first. Mouth open, head tilting. He is dumbfounded that his contained, neat, really smart partner-cum-friend-cum-whatever is laughing. She laughs. Yes, Mulder, she laughs.

He chuffs, sniffs out of his nostrils and nods his head slightly, hands still on his hips, but elbows softening. She’s dabbing at her eyes with a tissue and he closes the gap and goes to say something but instead laughs too. A barrelling chuckle that sucks the air from his lungs and sends her into a fresh fit of giggles herself. She bends forward and leans on her knees, waiting to breathe.

When they’re done, they flop on to the sofa and he sits just close enough. He’s red-faced and she’s pink-chested. There’s another Doris Day movie playing. Midnight Lace. 

“This is more your cup of tea, Mulder,” she says and giggles some more.

“I like cowboy movies,” he says, protesting mildly. His hand lands on her thigh and she feels warm, she feels pretty.

And he turns to kiss her and she kisses him back and it feels odd. And it feels right. And it feels like home.


End file.
